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weyrwolfen · 10 months

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Eidola: Chapter 11 - CT-81-1620 Shrike

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

They’d drawn lots to see who had to remain on base during the funeral, and if certain members of Ridge’s and Quad’s two teams were conspicuously missing from the names Captain Rex had pulled out of his own bucket, well, who was going to question him?

Shrike wasn’t.

He hadn’t known Hook or Kibble well, but Ricochet had joined the Reapers the same time Shrike had. They’d both been in the second wave of volunteers that had filled in the gaps when Jesse and Ridge had split the original team into two units. That had been a little over a year ago. An eternity, given the death rates among clone troopers, back during the war.

Captain Rex had made the arrangements yesterday when the medics had finally determined that everyone still in the Infirmary was definitely going to make it. Apparently, Major Ullmann had been the one to tell them who to contact and had even volunteered the credits to smooth the process along. So apparently that whole side of the operation was going well.

Which was good, right? It meant that Ricochet had died for something real. Not like all their brothers who had died during the war. Not like Manx, and Dev, and Stripes, and Garz, and…

Captain Rex had stepped forward and was saying… something. Shrike wasn’t really listening. Couldn’t, really. Everything seemed oddly distant. Everything other than the three bodies resting on the pyre, wrapped in Imp-issued blankets.

It seemed like they should have done something more, but Shrike wasn’t sure what. Back in the G.A.R., their brothers usually ended up consigned to the same incinerators that handled any other type of shipbound, organic waste. Worst case scenario, they’d been shipped back to Kamino for dissection and experimentation. Shrike had flown a couple of those courier missions. ‘Quality control, product research, and development,’ those orders had always read.

General Vazha had protested that practice early on in the war.

Some Senate subcommittee clerk had forwarded her the clause in the Republic’s contract with Kamino, which stipulated the fine incurred for withholding any requested remains. Apparently the amount would come out of the 317th’s budget.

Between refusing the requests and potentially running low of medical supplies and ammunition, the courier missions had started back up.

She’d gone out of her way to encourage their small rituals after that, remembrances for their fallen, but little emphasis had been placed on the actual bodies. The Kaminoans’ periodic requests aside, a trash incinerator was still a trash incinerator, after all.

This pyre felt different, but it still did little to ease the hollow feeling in Shrike’s chest.

Tech had cooked up some fabricated death certificates and a cultural waiver to avoid having a funerary attendant and fire suppression team on hand. The locals had been paid to drop off a significant quantity of kindling, a locally produced oil that served as both an accelerant and a perfume, and then make themselves scarce. It had fallen to the clones, and a very somber-looking Commander Tano, to arrange the bundles of wood on the stone-paved hilltop.

Commander Tano had hesitantly offered to move the bodies into place with the Force. They’d declined. It had seemed like something that should be done by hand.

By unspoken consensus, Quad and Ridge had been the ones to set the fires.

It took hours to completely cremate their brothers. No one said much after the flames were lit. They just set a guard and stood watch until the task was done.

Somehow, the ride back to the base felt even longer.

Shrike wasn’t cut out for this kind of assignment. He was a pilot. That was what he’d been trained for, what he was good at.

Then again, he didn’t think any of them had been trained for this.

Their Wadj brothers weren’t in good shape. Nobody had really expected them to be. They all remembered their own procedures, but Shrike hadn’t realized how much the medics had been discretely handling in the Draboon VIII medbay. Shrike had been a mess when his own chip had been removed. He hadn’t spoken at all the first few days after his surgery. He’d had to be cajoled into eating. He was pretty certain he’d woken up screaming every time he’d tried to sleep for the first week.

But unlike their Wadj brothers, he hadn’t been physically incapable of keeping down even the blandest of rations.

He hadn’t tried to physically injure himself.

Shrike now understood why the medics insisted that they go into the barracks for guard duty unarmed.

Kix and Aughts had finally de-chipped the last of their Wadj brothers, so at least they weren’t having to split guard duty between still-chipped clones plotting escape attempts from the Mess and de-chipped brothers barely keeping from shattering to pieces in the Barracks.

Some of Shrike’s brothers were better at interacting with the recovering clones than others. Both medics were a given, they actually had received formal instruction on working with psychological trauma, but others had really risen to the challenge. Captain Rex was steady as a rock, as usual, and so were the various team leaders. That wasn’t terribly surprising, but other brothers had really stepped up: Mirror, Ash, Clip, even kriffing Skid.

Not Shrike.

Shrike was having trouble getting outside of his own head long enough to be of much use.

One of the brothers in this room had killed Ricochet.

And Hook.

And Kibble.

He didn’t blame them. He knew what it was like to be under a chip’s control, but one of them had, and every time he looked at them, he couldn’t help but wonder. He hadn’t realized how much being a pilot had insulated him from dealing with the immediate effects of Reaper missions. He thought he’d been right in the thick of it with his team.

Clearly he hadn’t been, and that added a layer of guilt over top of everything else that was roiling around inside his head.

“Shrike,” Captain Rex’s voice broke through Shrike’s downwardly spiraling thoughts.

“Yes, sir?” Shrike asked, squaring up his shoulders even if he didn’t come to attention. They had all been instructed to keep things informal, in front of their recovering brothers.

“Round up Loops and Depot,” the Captain said, speaking softly enough to not be overheard by the closest Wadj clones, who were clustered together in shared misery and mutual support on their bunks. “I need you boys to shift the base’s fleet around to make some room for a few of our own ships.”

“Of course, sir,” Shrike answered, a little too quickly. He was immediately ashamed of the overwhelming rush of relief he felt to be getting out of the barracks. “How much room are we talking?”

“I’ve already asked Cling and Dive to bring in the Ballista and the Convor,” The Captain said, looking back out across the room. “Past that, it depends on how much room you can buy us. We’re trying to prioritize bringing in ships with the most bunk space.”

“Why bunk space?” Shrike asked, looking back out over the room to see if he could spot Depot or Loops. Neither one of them seemed to be present. Maybe they were in the Mess?

“You’d rather keep sleeping on the sparring mats?” Captain Rex asked, eyebrows inching up in the expression he got when he was being dangerously rhetorical.

“Nope, no sir,” Shrike replied with a small grimace. Gym mats got a particular smell about them, no matter how often they were cleaned and sanitized. And that smell was apparently transferable if you slept on them for multiple consecutive shifts.

Sleeping in his own bunk sounded amazing.

Having a secure retreat where he could blow off some steam when the situation inside the base started to get to be a bit much sounded even better.

“Well, get to it,” Captain Rex said with a knowing shake of his head.

Shrike tried to play it cool and not just flee the room like an utter coward. He was pretty sure he didn’t succeed.

The crowd parted around them, falling silent and drawing back as the squad passed through the capital’s mercantile district.

It made Shrike uneasy.

He hadn’t spent much time stationed dirt-side, much less anywhere with large civilian populations. He’d had some R and R stops on Coruscant, of course, and the odd turn at various spaceports and stations around the Outer Rim, but he’d never been part of an occupying force before. His prior worst-case-scenarios involved civilians reacting to him and his brothers with annoyance, scorn, or indifference, but never this kind of abject fear.

Under any other circumstances, Shrike would have been fascinated with the Wadj markets. The streets were lined with open-air displays. Colorful bolts of fabric were spread out next to unfamiliar fruits and brightly painted local pottery. Fluting music drifted out of a few of the small restaurants they passed.

As it was, Shrike was wound tighter than a reactor coil, grip tightening instinctively on his blaster at the slightest provocation.

The rest of the squad wasn’t doing much better. Torque and Vault were visibly tense, visors scanning every shadow for threats. Coins had karking-near drawn on a backfiring speeder that had passed them in the government sector. Of all of them, only Clip seemed even halfway at ease, but that was just Clip.

Kriffing ARCs. Every single one of them was insane, even if they all showed it differently.

Kark. These patrols were a bad idea. None of them were in the right headspace to be dealing with civilians just then.

Except they didn’t really have much of a choice on the matter. Appearances had to be maintained while the Wadj clones regained their footing, but these patrols were putting everyone on edge. The locals weren’t being actively hostile so far – the Empire’s yoke has rested very lightly on this planet in comparison to some others Shrike had seen – but one wrong move on their part could change that in a heartbeat.

Clip, at the head of their small formation, was making every effort to look as minimally threatening as possible. He’d grabbed an orange command pauldron for the patrol, giving him an excuse to wear his twin blasters rather than the more standard blaster rifles the rest of them were carrying. They’d stayed in their holsters the whole afternoon to leave his hands free, which was as close to ‘unarmed’ as a fully kitted out clone could possibly appear.

They heard the commotion before they rounded the corner of the next intersection. Every single one of them tensed, expecting the worst. Clip rested one hand on the butt of his right blaster and sent them an ‘Eyes up,’ hand signal over his shoulder. They fanned out behind him in a wedge formation. Shrike’s fingers traced the trigger guard of his blaster rifle, still held at a low ready stance, primed to snap up at a moment’s notice.

The scene that met them when they rounded the corner hardly warranted such preparation.

“You have to pay for that!” a human vendor was shouting, irritated enough to be oblivious to the way the crowd around him had abruptly fallen silent.

The target of his anger, a slender woman in a gray, tattered cloak was backing away from the vendor, shoulders hunched defensively.

Clip stopped and straightening into something a casual observer might mistake for a relaxed stance. Shrike and the rest of the squad followed his lead, tense, but waiting to see how this played out. Technically, Imp soldiers were empowered to intervene in any illegal actions they encountered.

Realistically, this was a complication they couldn’t really afford.

The vendor spotted the squad of seeming-Imperials first and froze, hand still half-raised in an accusatory point.

Shrike was still trying to figure out how the kriff they could extricate themselves from this situation when Clip was forced to clear his throat rather loudly to prevent the woman from backing straight into him.

She spun around in surprise, pale skin fading further to a sickly-looking gray when she realized who they were, or at least who they were presenting themselves to be. She was some variety of near-human species Shrike had never encountered before, hairless and scaled, and she was clutching a jar to her chest, a red medical symbol just visible on its lid.

Force. They were good and involved now.

Clip sounded as easy-going as ever when he asked, “What seems to be the problem here?”

Like they couldn’t fill in the blanks for themselves.

The vendor gaped, whatever feelings he had about being robbed of his wares apparently forgotten when faced with a heavily armed, Imperial peace-keeping force.

Because that was what they were supposed to be. Kark. Shrike wouldn’t have an issue gut-checking some hardened criminal in the streets, but he wanted nothing to do with arresting some poor woman who was shoplifting medicine of all things.

Were they supposed to hand her off to the local police force? He hadn’t exactly paid an excess of attention to the division of powers section of their brief on Wadj, the one covering rights and responsibilities of the local government and the Imperial representatives. If they brought her back to put her in the base’s brig, Ridge and Jesse would lose their osik, and rightfully so. They didn’t need any extra eyes inside the base, seeing what they were really up to in there.

Force. What in the kriffing hells were they supposed to do?

Nobody spoke for a long moment. Clip’s helmet was angled towards the vendor’s stall, obviously taking in the eclectic mix of herbal remedies and more Galactic-standard medicines.

The rest of the squad, Shrike included, remained fanned out behind Clip, shifting awkwardly as they waited to see how this whole mess played out.

Clip looked back at the woman, whose silvery, slitted eyes were dilated in obvious terror. Apparently coming to some kind of a decision, he abruptly bent low. Shrike was pretty certain he was the only one with the correct vantage to see Clip’s hand swipe past his belt to palm something from one of the pouches there before reaching as if to pick something up off of the ground. He then rose and extended a few credits towards the abruptly dumbfounded woman.

“I believe you dropped this,” he said, still sounding entirely unconcerned.

The woman’s eyes darted to Shrike and their other brothers before landing on Clip again. She reached out hesitantly, clearly expecting some sort of trap, and took the credits. “Thank you,” she said, whispery voice low and unsteady.

Ridge and Jesse were definitely going to lose their osik when they heard about this, because while Clip’s course of action was undoubtably the kindest escape route he could have taken to get out of this situation, it wasn’t the most discreet.

Stormtroopers weren’t exactly known for being kind.

Clip just nodded as if nothing was amiss, signaled for the rest of the squad to fall in behind him again, and said, “Be about your business, then.”

They waited around just long enough to see the woman hesitantly offer the shopkeeper some of the credits Clip had slipped her. The man accepted them with barely a glance, still watching the squad of troopers like he was expecting them to start indiscriminately blasting the crowd. The back of Shrike’s neck prickled under the weight of the stares when their squad finally continued down the street.

Nobody said much of anything for a good, long while after that. Shrike wasn’t sure what he could say while they were still at immediate risk of being overheard.

Finally, when their patrol route looped back around to the more-or-less depopulated warehouse district, Clip broke the group’s silence. “Should have expected that, us being out here on the shebs-end of the galaxy,” he said distractedly. When no one answered his seeming non-sequitur, Clip looked over his pauldron at Shrike and the rest of their squad. “What?”

Shrike wasn’t sure exactly what Clip was on about, and apparently neither was anyone else because Coins chimed in with, “You’re gonna have to give us a little more to work with than that.”

“The woman who palmed the broad-spec antibiotics back there,” Clip elaborated. “She’s a slave. Or, I don’t know, maybe a former slave? Kind of hard to tell without more intel.”

Shrike looked over at Torque, who was on his immediate left in their small, five-man formation. Torque shrugged.

“How do you figure that?” Shrike asked.

“She had a brand on the side of her neck some of the smaller Hutt subsidiaries use to mark their property,” Clip said, and there was a dark undercurrent to the usually easy-going ARC’s voice Shrike wasn’t used to hearing. “But this is about as far as you can get, spatially speaking, from Hutt space. Could be she ran and ended up here. Could be something worse.”

Vault, who’d taken the position immediately behind Shrike, snorted. “That’ll give the Raiders something to gnaw on.”

That was an understatement. Targeting slavers for supplies might have been a pragmatic decision at first, but it had pretty quickly morphed into a full-blown, personal crusade for the Raiders. If there was an active slave trade happening right outside their new base of operations, no force in the galaxy was going to stop them from rooting it out. And nobody else would be very interested in stopping them either, the only trick would be keeping their actions out of the public eye.

Some trick.

“Might be something, might be nothing,” Clip said with a shrug. “But we can tell the other patrols to keep an eye out.”

Force, they hadn’t even made it one day since the Captain and Commander had jetted off to Trip’s weird island before stepping in some new complication. Both Reaper leaders were going to lay a clutch of eggs when they heard.

They’d only just made the final turn into the base’s surveillance perimeter when Shrike’s HUD lit up with an incoming comm request. Apparently he wasn’t the only one, because Clip held up a hand signal for ‘Stop,’ and the blinking, red light in the bottom left of Shrike’s vision rolled over to solid green.

“Clip here,” the ARC said, voice oddly layered as it was passed along through all their comms.

“Hey Clip, this is Level,” a brother’s voice replied. “Just wanted to give your squad a heads up. We’ve got a small caravan of farmers outside of the front gate, dropping off their share of Imperial taxes in trade. The natborns are handling it. Just leave them to it.”

“Awesome, fresh veggies,” Clip said brightly, because of course that was his reaction. Shrike really didn’t get him sometimes.

“What he means is, we promise not to jump to any unfortunate assumptions and shoot the civilians,” Vault drawled.

“Right, that was more what I meant,” Level said dryly. “But Kenner did get weirdly excited when he saw the crate of tubers, so we might actually be in for a treat later.”

Shrike tried to dredge up the unfamiliar name from the whole slew of them he’d been trying to memorize recently. Kenner. Kenner was one of the first group of Wadj brothers Kix and Aughts had released from constant medical observation. Kenner had been in charge of the base’s Mess. Kenner had nightmares, and insomnia, and a scar up his left arm whose origins he could not remember. Right.

“Can’t wait,” Clip said cheerfully, signaling for them to start marching again.

Sure enough, when they arrived at the base, they found a small team of brothers offloading crates from a line of rather rickety-looking sleds. Shrike didn’t recognize any of them, not in their anonymous stormtrooper armor, but one of them paused to snap off an ironic little salute to Sergeant Levee, who was running the grav-lifts.

Agent Weeks was standing to one side of the base’s front gate, accepting datachips from a line of locals and inserting each in turn into her datapad. She was back to looking and acting like a pillar of ice. Too bad for her, Shrike knew better. He had been on guard when the natborn officers had been allowed to visit the Barracks for the first time. He had seen her façade crack wide open right before one of their Wadj brothers, Callen, had kriffing-near collapsed in her arms. She was alright.

“Everything seems to be in order,” she was saying, flat tone exactingly professional. “Once we perform a final inventory, I will file the requisite waivers.”

Shrike looked over the crates, which were spilling over with leafy purple stuff, orange-striped fruit-looking things, and who even knew what other kinds of presumably edible plants. They looked pretty similar to some of the produce he’d seen for sale in the open-air market. Given their reception, he’d half-expected withered, bug-eaten stuff instead. Not that he’d blame anyone with the guts to try sabotaging an Imperial base, but, well, it was his food they’d be poisoning.

The whole situation was karked.

Maybe they’d be able to work something out with the locals once everything had settled down. Some kind of real, mutually beneficial arrangement, like what the Republic had claimed to stand for, back in the day. Taking these farmers’ crops felt wrong, but they’d have to pay taxes to the Empire one way or the other. At least this way, the ledgers all balanced even while they were poking karking Palpatine in the eye.

The gate into the base had been cracked just wide enough to admit a line of troopers in single file. He had no idea if this was the normal way the farmers’ drop offs were usually handled, but it definitely blocked a direct view of the absurd number of ships in the courtyard from the street.

Clip dismissed the rest of the squad, who rapidly scattered. There wasn’t much time before the evening meal was set to be served, so Shrike elected to head towards the Thresher, which was berthed in the furthest corner of the packed courtyard.

They’d gotten a little creative with Captain Rex’s instructions, stacking in the ships and skimmers as tightly as possible. Nobody had reprimanded them for how they’d gone about rearranging the base’s small fleet, not even when Dive had parked the two AT-RTs in the bed of one of the largest sleds.

Next to the refueling station, Shrike spotted a trio of brothers guiding a pallet of fuel cylinders up the ramp and into the Ballista’s hold on a hover cart. He tried to stamp down the surge of jealousy, because the Ballista was Dive’s ship, and she was both higher in speed and lower on cabin space than Shrike’s own Thresher. And so Dive got to fly a bunch of fuel back to Draboon VIII, end of story.

Meanwhile Shrike was still stuck here, not flying, running patrols and taking shifts working in the communications tower or watching over their brothers in the Barracks. He felt utterly out of his element, being grounded for this long, but right now, the base needed more guards, not pilots.

At least he could change out of this ill-fitting stormtrooper armor now and run through his own sonics on his own ship before he was due back in the Mess. That was something.

“This is kriffing bantha poodoo, and you know it,” Shrike said, looking down at the dice, which had landed on twin ‘challenge’ sigils yet again.

“Rules are rules,” Eggs said with a shrug.

Ajay just grinned at him.

And okay, maybe his pride was an acceptable sacrifice if it meant his suffering could elicit a genuine laugh or two from any of the Wadj brothers, but still, this was karking gundark osik of the highest order.

At least Ajay hadn’t picked yet another karking pushup challenge this turn. Shrike could recognize hazing when he saw it, and his arms were starting to feel the burn.

“Blasters on the table,” Latch said, tone utterly flat even though his eyes were dancing with suppressed amusement.

Shrike grumbled, but still placed his borrowed blaster rifle on the table in the middle of the Mess. He didn’t have it in him to ruin their fun, given that playing along was parsecs better than dealing with the unrelieved misery that had been the norm around the base for far too long. He could more easily remember that they were just brothers and respond accordingly, when they were all acting like this.

Even if they were being a bunch of smug shebse.

Ajay had also laid out his own weapon, every one of his teeth on display as he placed his hands, palms down, on the table.

Shrike mirrored his stance.

“And,” Latch said, drawing out the word for dramatic effect. “Go!”

Every clone was expected to be able to field strip a blaster rifle in under one and half minutes, and yeah, maybe Shrike’s specialty wasn’t blasters, but he was no slouch in the basics. Playing along didn’t mean he was going to actually let himself lose to these di’kute.

Pins and charge packs started hitting the table in rapid succession.

Shrike was keeping pace with Ajay, whatever, fine, but he knew a decidedly non-standard trick for popping the accelerator that could earn him a couple extra seconds…

His palms hit the table, the signal that he was done a split second before Ajay’s did, and he had half stood back up to gloat over his win when suddenly Ajay was assembling his blaster again in reverse order.

That… hadn’t been part of the stated challenge.

Latch, their unofficial referee, just gave Shrike a bland look.

Shrike scrambled to grab the disassembled parts of his blaster. “Karking cheater,” he growled.

Ajay just smirked and said, “Whine more, fly-boy.”

Shrike could hear snickering on either side of them, but he didn’t look up, trying to catch up with Ajay.

But he’d lost too much time, kark it all.

Ajay’s palms hit the table again, while Shrike was still fumbling with inserting the final pin.

The Wadj brothers on either side of them were raucous with their congratulations, which was entirely unfair.

Ajay just grinned and reached for Shrike’s bowl of spicy tuber bites. Apparently they were a rare treat around the base and had therefore fallen into the realm of currency when Latch and Ajay had proposed this farce.

Shrike snatched up the bowl, denying the cheating bantha karker his ill-gotten winnings, and crammed a handful of the hot snacks in his mouth out of pure spite.

His eyes watered in protest. What the kriff did Kenner put in these things, anyway?

Things might have spiraled further out of control – Ajay was nearly breathless with laughter, and Eggs had definitely scooped up a spoonful of his starchy meat dish and was holding it in obvious flicking position – when a loud, “Hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” made all of them freeze.

Shrike turned to see who it was, mouth still burning in protest, the bowl of crunchy treats cradled protectively in both hands.

Jesse was giving them a look that clearly said that they were all a bunch of idiots. Funny idiots, but idiots all the same.

“I hate to break up the fun, but I need to borrow Shrike,” he said, clearly holding onto his composure by his fingernails.

Shrike placed the half-eaten bowl back on the table and scooped up his blaster and plain, stormtrooper helmet with as much dignity as he could muster.

Ajay reached over and picked up a few tuber bites out of Shrike’s bowl and popped them in his mouth with the same osik-eating grin.

Shrike kept his expression neutral as he fell in beside Jesse, but he also flashed a very rude hand gesture behind his back when they turned to walk out of the room.

The table of Wadj brothers dissolved into laughter again.

“They seem to be doing better,” Jesse said when the door of the Mess swished closed behind them.

Shrike shrugged, still a little embarrassed to be caught by the other Reaper team leader behaving like a karking cadet. Still, it was good to hear any of the Wadj brothers laughing. It had been nice, to interact with some of them and not feel like he was being sucked back down by their shared demons. “Looks like,” he said awkwardly, and then added to change the subject, “So, what’re you borrowing me for?”

Jesse gave him a sideways look out of the corner of his eye, the laugh lines which had been tugging at the Republic cog tattoo that dominated his face abruptly shifting into something a little more serious. “Interested in flying some stuff out to Trip’s team?”

Shrike immediately perked up at that. “Yes” he answered unequivocally, not even trying to conceal his immediate interest.

Jesse smirked a little at that. “Kind of figured,” he said. “Short version short, we’ve got our hands on some water treatment units and backup generators to send out to the island.”

Well that was going to be useful. “And the longer version?” Shrike asked.

“Scrapped plans for an Imp satellite base on the southern tip of the continent. Supplies for the project have been collecting dust in a storage room on base ever since. Factor and Tech are cooking up some six-month-old reports that the equipment was picked up and transported back to an Imp warehouse in Sundari for redistribution. Apparently the facility has been having some trouble with theft lately.” Jesse answered with a wide grin.

Shrike eyed the base’s temporary co-OIC, trying to figure out what about that story was so amusing. “Bo-Katan’s people, or regular old graft?”

“Graft, at least right up until Commander Tano told the Mandos about it, and now they’re definitely taking advantage too,” Jesse shrugged as he shouldered open the door leading out into the courtyard. “Kind of puts the Imps in a bind regarding reporting the legit thefts.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of shabuire.

Shrike hesitated when Jesse turned left and started walking towards a cluster of ships which had belonged to the base. He’d assumed he’d be flying the Thresher, but she was berthed on the opposite end of the courtyard.

“Who am I flying there?” he asked, eyes landing covetously on the base’s single interceptor. No way he’d get to take her for a spin, she didn’t have half a cubic meter of storage space to spare.

Jesse just looked at him, eyes sparkling with mischief, and pointed to a karking tub of a cargo hauler, wedged in the very back of the lot.

Oh…

“Right.”

Kriff it, she’d fly. That was good enough.

If Jesse seriously thought he was going to throw a tantrum about getting assigned the next best thing to a sanitation barge for this mission, then he had sorely underestimated Shrike’s desire to get back up in the air.

“So, when do I fly out?”

AN: Other chapters are available here.

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

#eidola tcw fanfic #tcw #star wars #clone wars #star wars the clone wars #the clone wars #clones #fanfic #fanfiction #clone troopers #tcw fanfic #clone wars fanfiction #the clone wars fanfiction #the clones deserved better

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kaffeine-headache · 3 years

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The Empire lied to Crosshair

I’m still not convinced that Crosshair’s chip is out, even after the StarWars.com interview with EPs Jennifer and Brad, and it’s mostly to do with what happened on Bracca.

The encounter on Bracca is so important as to why the Empire would tell Crosshair his chip has been removed and it’s because of the presence of his Elite squad. When Hunter is pleading with Crosshair to ‘wake up’ because there is an inhibitor chip in his head, his Elite Squad is literally right there, standing there like ‘wut’.

“Crosshair, wake up. You’re being controlled by an inhibitor chip.”

“He’s telling the truth. The Kaminoans put chips in all the clones. Remember what I told you in the brig? You can’t help it.”

The entire Elite Squad hears this dialogue between Hunter, Crosshair, and Omega and if we know anything about the Elite Squad is that they couldn’t give two shits about Crosshair because he’s a clone. They visibly turn to look at Crosshair when Hunter tells him this. After this mission on Bracca, they all would had to submit reports on the incident which would have included this interaction, similarly to how any after-mission protocol goes (ex. the Batch reported what happened on Kaller).

The Elite Squad, and maybe even Crosshair himself, had to have filed reports detailing that the Bad Batch tried to sway Crosshair by telling him about the inhibitor chips. This information would have gotten to Rampart who is their direct report, and how would the Empire rectify this?

Tell Crosshair that his actions are his own and that the Batch lied to him. Tell Crosshair that the clones are independent and that their loyalty to the Empire stems from what they know is right. Tell Crosshair that the chip has been gone for a long time.

“Does it matter?” Yes Crosshair it does! He has absolutely no damn clue when the chip was supposedly taken out, so he deflects when Hunter asks. That’s just what the Empire told him.

There is absolutely no reason to remove Crosshair’s inhibitor chip, even after he gets the burn from laying his head on the hot-ass metal from the ion engine blast. Burns are skin deep and wouldn’t have any effect on the chip that’s deep down in his brain. The Empire would know that there would be no guarantee that Crosshair would stay loyal after it’s taken out, so why even bother?

Also, Tarkin’s throwaway line of “Let’s see if he stays that way” in Ep.3 after another enhancement? He definitely doesn’t but it’s not because the chip was removed.

Ryloth is a great place to see Crosshair battle the chip after he asks Rampart to hunt the Batch down. His face is all over the place in the very last shot and it’s worth mentioning because body language is very telling and intentional in animation.

Rampart mentions that he has underestimated Crosshair’s little ‘friends’; Cross deflects and looks down.

His face becomes scrunched, lowered eyebrows, narrowed eyes.

Next second his facial expression changes, as he looks more pensive & conflicted.

Very next second, his eyebrows lower again & his eyes narrow for a more determined & angry expression.

Then his face changes once again to more pensive & conflicted.

Finally, he lands and stays on this expression.

For being ‘severe & unyielding’, Crosshair has always been very expressive with his face and this scene is to intentional on showing the audience that he is conflicted. He swaps back and forth every second between determined, angry, and pensive for this scene and it’s very telling that the chip is working overtime to overcome his internal thoughts on ‘hunting them down’.

He loves his family, he wants to be with them, but the chip is forcing this unconditional loyalty through his brain that puts a filter on every single one of this thoughts. Two instances in the finale where he grabs his head? Super intentional & have always been a visual indicator that the chip is active/trying to activate.

Crosshair might not be lying when he says he doesn’t have his chip anymore because he believes it. The problem is that he’s being lied to and led to believe he is loyal on his own terms.

I think that Season 2 will tell us via AZI-3 that his chip is still in his head. AZI-3 was present for the chip enhancements and was, in general, the one in charge of Crosshair’s health. He’ll definitely know Crosshair’s chip situation.

And I could totally be wrong!! I don’t think I am though. Jennifer & Brad, I respectfully disagree.

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willowcrowned · 3 years

Note

Okay but has anyone considered Obi-wan/Cody/Satien (is that how its spelled?) Regardless, hes got two hands for his two mandalorians, the au where this happend is gotta be top notch ridiculous ye?

Okay thank you so much for giving me a reason to think about this, because this AU contains three things I adore: polyamory, ships where everyone is frighteningly competent, and Obi-Wan

In this AU, Ventress is somehow even less well-adjusted (bear with me). What this means is that, instead of taking a gap year and finding herself after her family is brutally murdered, she decides she needs to get revenge even more now. What does this mean? In the short term, she still becomes a bounty hunter, but in the long run? She’s looking for a Sith lord team up so she can punch Dooku (with a lit lighstaber) in his stupid, elitist, backstabbing face.

So when Maul invades Mandalore, what happens? Ventress comes right along, ready to give her ‘I know we hate each other, but consider teaming up to kill someone we both hate even MORE’ space TED talk. And though Maul may be terribly annoying, a closet theater kid, always in a tits out kind of mood, and denying his gay awakening, he’s not stupid. He knows Sidious is coming for him, sooner rather than later, and he knows he needs more people on his side than his (impressively beefy) brother. He and Savage agree to the team-up.

Cue Obi-Wan showing up, ready to save his sort-of girlfriend, and finding Pre Vizsla, who got REAL sus the second ANOTHER lunatic with a red lightsaber showed up, occupied by capturing Maul, Savage, and Ventress.

Obi-Wan saves Satie, who convinces him to call Cody for a quick evac, and they’re running away, flirting, and arguing over shooting things (as usual), when they spot Ventress, Maul, and Savage, about to be executed.

Oh, they both think, hell no. And then, because they have a stupid moral code that makes them do stupid moral things, they go save them.

A little background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has been fighting in a war for over two years. He is exhausted, close to a breakdown, and seriously questioning his place as a General. Next to him at all times, supporting him, helping him, and saving him, is Cody, who is clever, kinder than he has any right to be, and is, of course, devastatingly handsome when he does his special, unique-to-Cody half-smirk.

Obi-Wan, to put it mildly, is totally gone on him. Obi-Wan also, to put it less mildly, is his commanding officer in an army that Cody can’t leave on pain of death. To do anything— make any advance beyond the flirting that he engages in with most people— would put Cody in a very uncomfortable position, whether or not he returns Obi-Wan’s feelings. So Obi-Wan watches him from afar, hoping against hope that his affections are returned, and that one day, after the end of the war, there will be a future for both of them.

A little more background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has always respected Satine. Their correspondence fell apart just a few months after the end of his mission with Qui-Gon, but he’s been keeping up with her professional accomplishments for years. Over time, the love he bore for her faded, leaving him with good memories and an enduring appreciation for her courage, her cleverness, and her ability to deliver devastating blows to someone’s confidence with a few well-placed words.

Until he sees her again. And yes, alright, he might be angry that she’s choosing to stay out of the war— he knows what good she could do— but he understands her fears, understands the very real possibility that if Mandalore gets embroiled in yet another war, they may never recover. The thing is... well, she’s still very beautiful, especially when he’s yelling at him, and as slowly as his feelings had faded then, they come back in a rush now.

He has very much fallen in love with Cody, and he is very much still in love with Satine.

Cut back to the present— Obi-Wan and Satine rescue the three most annoying Sith in the galaxy and get the heck out of dodge. Cody, because he’s Cody, comes swooping in with a last-minute rescue.

At this point, two things are occurring.

The first: Obi-Wan is stuck in a room with four people he’s periodically flirted with over the past few years, two of whom he’s desperately in love with, one of whom he had a weird encounter with that he can never tell Anakin about when she and him got trapped in a middle school auditorium, and one of whom is definitely wearing no shirt and all that jewelry for a reason. It is Supremely awkward for him.

The second: Every single person in that room, each of which is (barring Savage) deeply attracted to Obi-Wan, is realizing that Obi-Wan is dressed in Mandalorian armor, and while Obi-Wan in three layers of tunics and a cloak is an absolute knockout, Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor may very well kill them (and he won’t even have to touch his lightsaber to do it).

For one single moment, everything is absolutely still as they all stare at each other.

...And then Maul starts on the ‘I will rend your flesh from your bones, feel my wrath, Kenobarrgh’ spiel, and Satine stuns him. Oh, and Savage. Ventress agrees to watch the two of them if they don’t stun her, and Obi-Wan agrees.

Which then leaves him, Cody, and Satine in a room alone.

A word on Cody at this point: He has been bred from birth to be the perfect soldier— loyal, clever (but not too clever), and rigourously adherent to protocol. Yet, within three months of knowing Obi-Wan, he’s, well, calling him Obi-Wan in his head. Even just that is a gross breach of protocol, but he’s compromised in more ways than one. He talks to Obi-Wan, now, not just as a subordinate, or secondary advisor, but as a friend, as a councilor. Every time Obi-Wan touches him— never for longer than a brief second— his skin lights up under his armor. One time, Obi-Wan fell asleep on him for half an hour, and Cody’s was sure everyone would hear his heartbeat.

What he’s doing— how he feels— he knows it’s putting Obi-Wan in danger, knows that if the Kaminoans had wanted to the clones to be equals to the Jedi, they would have told them so. And look, he knows what the natborns would call the way he’s feeling, but he can’t feel that way. He’s a clone— he’s expendable by definition. Even if, on some off-chance, he makes it out of this war alive, there’s nothing for him. Obi-Wan couldn’t care for him like that, couldn’t care for a man with the same face as millions of others, born and bred only for war. So it doesn’t matter how he feels.

A word on Satine at this point: Obi-Wan, when he left, was a gawkish, bumbling thing of red hair and freckles and the sweetest smile. Obi-Wan, when he came back, was graceful, eloquent, and very, very handsome. He is also infuriating. (This does not change how attracted she is to him in the least.)

She’s not a romantic, really, but she is a realist, and she knows she’s loved him in some form or another for over twenty years. She knows she can’t ask him to return it— knows that asking him to leave the order for her wouldn’t just be for her, it would be for Mandalore, and while the politician in her cries for her to claim him, the person in her who loves Obi-Wan could not abide tearing him away from his culture for her own purposes. She still loves him, deeply and irrevocably, and she knows he still loves her. (Maybe, she thinks, after the war... But she can’t afford to be sentimental).

What do Cody and Satine have in common? They’re both extremely competent, both instinctively ruthless, and they both love Obi-Wan. Oh, and they’re also both immediately jealous of their counterpart.

They know they shouldn’t be. They know it’s not fair, not when Obi-Wan isn’t theirs anyways, but it doesn’t change the surge of envy and dislike that happens when they see Obi-Wan use the soft voice he only uses for the people he likes best on the person across from them.

Cody knows he can never compare to the Duchess, who is beautiful and well-spoken and has held Obi-Wan’s heart since they were fifteen. Satine knows she can never compare to Cody, who has been at Obi-Wan’s side every second since the war’s beginning, who is so much closer in ideals to Obi-Wan than she is, however it might appear on the surface.

Fortunately, they don’t have to deal with it for long, because Ventress comes in with Maul and Savage and proposes a team up, at which point Maul reveals the identity of the Sith Master.

Obi-Wan swears a string of words that Cody and Satine are both very impressed by, and agrees to the team up. Cody and Satine, who are both going to Coruscant anyways, agree to it too.

What ensues is a good deal of scheming, during which Cody and Satine avoid each other like the plague, Obi-Wan is repeatedly told to get some sleep, and Ventress cuffs Maul to a door on multiple nonconsecutive occasions. When they get to Coruscant, Satine has already told Padmé, who has in turn told her group of anti-war (and anti-Palpatine) senators, Cody has given Rex a heads up, and Ventress, Maul, and Savage have been metaphorically sharpening their lightsabers for ages.

(It occurs to Obi-Wan, at one point, after he’s woken up from his enforced 25-hour nap, that Palpatine must have created the clone army for a reason— must have a failsafe in place— and he asks Ahsoka to pull all the data the Kaminoans have on the clones. They find out about the chips, and Ahsoka immediately immediately holds the Kaminoans at laser sword point until they reprogram every order into a command that dissolves the chip.)

The thing about organizing a coup together is that it makes it very hard to avoid each other. Cody and Satine are forced to work together, and, what do you know, it turns out that even with seething jealousy at work, they end up respecting each other. (Note: Obi-Wan comes into a room at one point to see them both bent over a commlink, heads together and hands nearly touching. He short circuits.)

In any case, coup, Palps dies, Republic fixed, whatever.

What’s important is that Obi-Wan gets really, really injured— so much so that he might die. Cody and Satine have dealt with him being dead before (Deception arc anyone?), but this? Watching him slowly fade, knowing there’s nothing they can do about it? That’s worse.

One night, when Anakin has fallen asleep, they have a long conversation in low voices about Obi-Wan, darting from fond to furious to devastated over and over again. If he wakes up— if, not when— they agree to say something to Obi-Wan, to let him know that they love him. It’s a meager consolation after all they’ve been through, but this is the end, in one way or another, and they deserve to be honest with him.

(Cody thinks, privately, that he will be— well, not tossed aside, because Obi-Wan isn’t the sort of person who does that, but there won’t be a place for him by Obi-Wan’s side anymore. Obi-Wan is a Jedi, a negotiator, a peacekeeper, and Cody is a soldier for a now-ended war. He is already steeling himself to accept Obi-Wan’s polite rejection with equanimity, to not cause more pain to the man. (It will be easy, he knows, to wish him every peace, every happiness. Cody has only ever wanted to see Obi-Wan happy. This does not mean it will not be painful.) Obi-Wan said once that he would have left the Order for Satine if she’d asked— she will ask, now, and Cody knows Obi-Wan will leave, can see the love written in his face, in his spine, in his hands, whenever he is around her. Satine will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Cody will be left to look for a place in this new galaxy.)

(Satine thinks, privately, that Obi-Wan’s feelings for her must be long faded, replaced by his obvious ones for Cody. Obi-Wan is a warrior, a Knight, and Satine is a diplomat who foreswore violence long ago. She is already steeling herself to accept his rejection with grace. (It will be easy, she knows, to wish him well. She has only ever wanted good things for him. This does not mean it will not be painful.) He said once that he would have left the Order for her if she’d asked, and whatever he’d felt then for her pales to what he feels now for Cody. Cody will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Satine will rule as she always has.)

And then Obi-Wan wakes up.

Cody and Satine let him have his long talk with Anakin first, partially because they know how important it is to him, partially because Anakin wouldn’t let them if they wanted to, and partially because they are dreading their own coming conversation. When Anakin has finished, and Obi-Wan is asleep again, they go in, hand-in-hand, and wait for him to wake up.

When he does wake up, he sees them holding hands and immediately comes to several wrong conclusions. Wrong Conclusion A: Cody and Satine are in love. Wrong Conclusion B: Cody and Satine are going to try to break the news that they’re in love to him gently. Wrong Conclusion C: This conversation is about to break his heart.

Then they speak.

At the end of it, Obi-Wan has some Thoughts. Thought One: alkdfjhskhsgjljlbhkgkjbjvnab,gkjvn;qlerghjsv?????!!!!fwbfwlkrehwogwhuwrijvhfdbhkf!!!! Thought Two: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Thought Three: Oh, we’re all idiots. Fantastic.

He then passes out, because being on the edge of death for days and then having a shock to your system this big tends to do that to you.

When he wakes up, he is mildly more coherent. Then he sees that Satine and Cody are asleep on each other, and the coherence is lost, but he does manage to wake them up and get across three things:

Thing One: He is desperately in love with them both.

Thing Two: He’s leaving the Order for a multitude of reasons, but they are a Significant Bonus.

Thing Three: He would very much like if they both held his hand while he falls back asleep.

Cody takes Obi-Wan’s right hand, Satine takes Obi-Wan’s left hand, and the three of them stay like that, fingers intertwined, for a long, long, while.

#this is. Long #obi wan DOES have two hands #i have not checked this for grammar mistakes #asks #missstar489 #obi wan has two hands au #codywan #obitine #codyobitine #star wars #star wars au #obi wan kenobi #satine kryze #commander cody #willow's aus #god this is 2.4k #no wonder it took me so long #me: I'll just reply to this ask real quick :)#me an hour later: oh. oh no

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theeasternempress · 3 years

Text

A Message for a Graveless Brother

Summary - On the anniversary of Fives’ death, Echo tells his lost brother of his new family.

Word count - 1.4k

AO3

As happy as Echo was to be traveling across the galaxy with the Bad Batch, he couldn’t deny that his late-night thoughts often made him crave his old life. Rex and the entire 501st had held Echo’s heart for so long and even though Echo was happy where he was, Echo was having difficulty forgetting his roots.

His brothers in the 501st had been everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever needed. There were times when they drove him crazy, but now he could only fondly reflect on those times as the happiest time of his life. If he could go back in time, he’d kick himself for spending so much time reading reg manuals instead of spending those precious moments with his brothers.

Each time he thought of his brothers, he thought of the pain they must have gone through when they believed Echo to be dead. Did they mourn him and if so, for how long? Did they do anything to remember him? Who was the one who cleaned out his bunk and locker? Did they clutch his few belongings tight, fighting back tears?

These thoughts plagued Echo for much longer than he cared to admit, yet the one thought he always cursed was the thought of the heart-wrenching pain Fives had gone through at his loss. He and Fives had been the final members of Domino Squad for so long that he’d been unable to imagine a life without his brother, without his best friend, and he was sure Fives thought the same.

But now, it was Echo who was the final member of Domino Squad. All the pain and sorrow that Fives had been going through, Echo was now going through as well. In a way, it helped Echo feel better connected to the brother he never got to say goodbye to.

The rapid buzzing of the comms system broke Echo from his reverie and returned him to his position in the cockpit. When Echo checked the comm line, the communication number matched the one that Rex had given him on Bracca. Everyone else on the ship was asleep, so it would give Echo a private moment to talk to his old Captain. Echo accepted the comm request and impatiently waited for Rex’s figure to appear, despite it only taking seconds.

Rex was hunched over, draped in the poncho that he’d been wearing in Cid’s parlor, with a weary look on his face. Echo knew that Rex was in serious need of some rest, but he also knew that Rex never rested until all of his work was complete.

Echo fought the urge to salute Rex, instead saying, “It’s good to see you, Rex. Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s alright I just … just wanted to talk to you about something,” Rex replied, the tired roughness to his voice making him sound decades older.

Echo stayed silent as Rex continued, “It’s been a year since Fives’ death and … I don’t know, I felt like I had to contact you to talk about him. Do you remember the plaque I gave you, the one that I painted his helmet insignia on?”

Of course Echo did. The plaque was nothing more than a roof tile ripped off of a Kaminoan building that had been meticulously painted with Fives’ helmet insignia. Rex had given the plaque to Echo before he left with the Bad Batch as a way of having both Fives and Rex with him. The plaque was small enough that it could easily be tucked into a pocket, so Echo always had it on him.

Echo pulled the plaque out of his pocket and put it within view of Rex. Even through the slightly distorted hologram, Echo could see Rex’s expression soften and his shoulders drop at the sight of the plaque in Echo’s hands.

“I always have it with me, Rex. I think of it almost as a good luck charm … as a way of having both you and Fives with me,” Echo spoke softly.

“I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand the circumstances of Fives’ death,” Rex began with a shaky breath, “But I’m damn sure that every day that goes by, I thank Fives more and more for his warning about the inhibitor chips.”

“He was the best brother anyone could ask for. He’d be happy to know he died to save his brothers,” Echo said wistfully.

Echo and Rex spent the next hour talking of Fives with Echo relaying his favorite memories of his favorite brother while Rex filled Echo in on all of the time Echo had lost with Fives. Eventually, a familiar female voice called out for Rex, leaving the two brothers to say a hasty goodbye before ending the transmission.

With Rex gone, Echo was left alone with the shiny plaque held tight in his hands. The paint job on it was immaculate, and Echo almost couldn’t believe how perfectly Rex had been able to recreate Fives’ helmet. Echo softly traced the blue design before pressing it to his forehead and sighing. He’d never be able to rest his helmet against Fives’ in the way they did after every successful mission, so this would have to do.

The memory of his lost brother reminded Echo of his new brothers and little sister. He’d had his entire life ripped away from him by the Techno Union, but his new family was helping him rebuild his life brick-by-brick. It was taking time, but they gave him more patience than he thought he deserved.

It made Echo wonder, what would Fives think of his new family? Would he be upset with him for not staying with Rex and the 501st, or would he be happy that he’d found a new family on his own?

Staring at the plaque in his hands, Echo knew that Fives would only want whatever would make Echo the most happy. He’d been like that their entire lives, one time going so far as to steal a bag of candy for him after Echo off-handedly mentioned craving some. Echo berated him for the act, but smiled every time he unwrapped a piece of candy. The sweet memory still made Echo smile.

With his gaze locked on the familiar blue paint, Echo began to whisper, “I miss you so much, Fives. I have a new family now and even if they’ll never be the same as Domino Squad, they’ve given me a home.”

Echo paused to collect himself while carefully choosing his next words, “I think you’d like them. I mean, Crosshair is kind of a jerk and I know you two would butt heads, but I’d still trust him with my life. Wrecker, on the other hand, you would absolutely adore. He’s almost as crazy as you, but he’s got a heart of gold. He’s a gentle giant if I’ve ever met one.”

“Hunter is our leader, our sergeant, and is definitely the tamest out of the four of them. Not like that’s hard,” Echo laughed to himself, “He’s a good brother who puts a lot of the team’s worries on his shoulders, too many of them if I’m being honest. Tech … he’s the hardest to describe. He and I work together the most and I enjoy his company. We definitely bicker a lot, but at the end of the day he’s still a good brother. We’d be in a lot of trouble without him.”

“I think your favorite would be Omega, though. She’s our little sister, and I know you would have loved to meet her. She’d laugh at every single joke you’d make, even if it was one of your stupid ones that only you thought were funny. You … you would be a good older brother to her.”

The thought of Fives being unable to meet the brothers and sister he so dearly loved brought tears to Echo’s eyes. He knew they’d all jokingly complain about the addition of another reg to their team, but Echo had a strong feeling that Fives would easily find a place among them. Echo wiped away his tears, replacing them with the smile that he knew Fives would want from him.

With the blue of hyperspace swirling around him, Echo allowed himself to tilt his head back and try to fall asleep. He replaced the grief at the life he had lost with Fives with replays of his favorite memories of Fives, Rex, Domino Squad, and the 501st. With those nostalgic memories in his mind, Echo fell asleep with a soft smile on his face.

Unbeknownst to a sleeping Echo, a familiar hand now rested on his shoulder as the ghost of Fives stared fondly at his slumbering brother.

#tbb #the bad batch #tbb echo #echo #captain rex #fives #hurt/comfort #no plot just feelings #tcw #the clone wars #my writing

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deewithani · 3 years

Text

A clone’s first day at Coruscant prison

Clone Trooper Toast Series Volume 1

Pairing: Clone Trooper Toast x GN!Reader

Word count: 2,336

T/W: Hazing

Rating: G

A/N: I couldn’t help but go serious with this. It was started out as a drabble, but quickly gained its own life and I couldn’t stop. Toast clone is love. Toast clone is life. Toast clone deserves happiness too. I might write another couple of fics to give him some. This is my first fic ever, no beta. If we die, we die.

Tags: @royalhandmaidens as requested.

If you sat Toast down and asked him what his favorite food in the galaxy was, he would tell you it was toast. It was true, and his love for toast begat the name that he was given. He didn’t know exactly what it was about toast that made it his favorite food. It tasted good, sure, much better than the rations that were more commonly served to clones no longer in training (or so he had heard, he was fresh out of training himself), and definitely better than what they served to cadets to ensure their nutritional needs were met, but not exceeded, at the bare minimum of cost. You could put different toppings and spreads on it, giving you a new breakfast every day if you wanted. And it was cheap, so the Republic had no issue serving it to Clones as an “option”, sitting in the breakfast lineup on a tray, next to a small basket filled with small packets of butter and jogan fruit jam. He came to the mess at the same time every day, just so he could have some toast, because breakfast was his favorite part of every day. No, he wasn’t sure what it was about toast itself that made him like it best, but he knew it was his favorite food the first time he had breakfast at the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center.

You thought back to the first time you ever met Toast, the very first day he came to the prison, and the first time you ever saw “First Breakfast”. He arrived early that morning directly from Kamino with many of his other brothers, fresh faced and ready to make a difference in the war. To do a good job. To be a good soldier. To be a good brother. He had high hopes for this posting, and high expectations for himself, and he was prepared to do his duty to serve the Republic and its people. You thought back to that day with happiness. It was the day you met the most wonderful person in the galaxy.

On that very first day on duty he was cornered by a small group of more experienced troopers who were tasked with showing him around and getting him acquainted with his job and the brothers he would be working with. One of the most well known first day rituals the the boys participated in was known as the “First Breakfast”. It was a time where the more experienced clones would welcome their new brothers, in their own special way. The First Breakfast was a tradition, and every clone that worked at the prison had participated in it. Toast’s participation in the First Breakfast was required before he set foot on the floor, whether he knew it or not.

“C’mon vod” the leader of the group, Ether, had said. “Let’s head to the mess to grab some grub before shift change.” Toast spent the short walk answering questions, “How are the cadets on Kamino doing?”, “What do you think of Coruscant?”, “Do you know any girls?”, “Did you chose a name yet?”. He didn’t really know how to answer those questions, he never really thought about his own feelings about his life, but he answered them as best he could. The cadets were doing as well as any other clone had done on Kamino. Coruscant was different than Kamino, but he had never been any other place to make a fair comparison. Of course he didn’t know any girls, there were none aside from the Kaminoans and the Jedi Shaak Ti at the training center. And no, he didn’t have a name, he just didn’t stand out from his brothers enough to warrant a name, either from his vod or from his own heart.

When they finally reached the mess, Ether put an arm around Toast and gave him a rough side hug. “Alright vod. This is the staff mess. There’s mostly clones here, but there is some natborn staff, so don’t be surprised if you see a face that doesn’t look like your own in the mess every now and then. Now, the menu changes, and you know as well as the rest of us that some food just isn’t edible, so let me guide you through what’s good, and what’s not.” As he walked down the line he pointed out exotic dishes, to Toast’s palette anyway.

You sat alone in the corner of the mess, reading the day’s news on your holopad, unaware of the shiny new trooper that Ether’s crew just brought through the door. Ether lifted his voice, pulling your attention to the group, where he had his arm around the shoulders of the timid looking clone. You had heard that Ether liked to put new troopers under his wing, at least long enough to play a mean spirited prank on them, but the clones had always been tight lipped, and you had never seen or heard any solid proof it. Until today. Today, it looked like you might get a glimpse inside the world of a new clone at the Coruscant prison.

You watched as Ether pointed out various foods to the new trooper, shaking his head yes and no at various times, presumably to indicate which choices were better than others. It should seem obvious which were best; some dishes were barely touched, while others were attacked as if they were set out for a pack of loth-wolves. It didn’t take a scientist to know that clones had a liking for the spicy pepper hash that was a staple in the mess, and tended to stay away from the blue hued yogurt. You suspected that Ether was telling him the same.

First Breakfast always –always – included the spicy pepper hash. Every new trooper had to try it, even though all the others knew it was spicier than the lava of Mustafar. Ether knew First Breakfast was a mean prank. New clone trooper, fresh from Kamino? He’s never had anything spicier than some salt and pepper added to the “grey fluff” they called food on Kamino. The long necks probably didn’t even know what a pepper was, if he was being honest with himself. But he had seen more than one new shiny come through those prison doors and fall in love with the spicy pepper hash. They just needed to jump in feet first. Try it, burn up your taste buds, have a good laugh with your brothers, and tada, you’re part of the group! Every single clone here went through it, and it was obvious that almost all of them had a taste for the peppers. Besides, even if he didn’t like it, it was a bonding experience, and there were other things he could eat after today. He wouldn’t be the only clone that would pass on the hash after the First Breakfast, and no one held it against any of the others.

You watched as Ether filled the young clone’s plate with spicy pepper hash, telling him it was the most popular dish at the prison. He didn’t lie, exactly. It was. Loved by both clone troopers and prisoners, the hash was easily mass produced, cheap, and came frozen, allowing it to be safely stored for long periods. It was perfect for the prison, and the workers and inhabitants it contained. He just left out the ‘it’s so spicy it will make you cry’ part. The new trooper didn’t even know what spicy was, let alone that it caused physical pain, but Ether and the other clones did, and you did too. Unfortunately for the young shiny, you didn’t know that he never eaten anything spicy before. The clone troopers seemed to love it, so why would you think the new guy would be any different.

Ether and his buddies led Toast to a table, in his hands his full plate and a small glass of water. The others had also chosen the spicy pepper hash, but had chosen to drink blue milk instead. “Kriff”, you thought to yourself, “that hash is really spicy. The other troopers are drinking blue milk, but he’s only got a glass of water. He doesn’t know what he’s in for”. You made the decision right then, if this is what Ether has in mind for his “prank”, you’ll have a glass of blue milk ready for what you felt was inevitable. If you were wrong, well, you would just have a glass of blue milk to drink for yourself. No harm, no foul, you could play it off as being thirsty and not bother the clones as they went about their business, but you wanted to be ready in any case. You didn’t like a bully, in any case, and if you had to take the new trooper the milk you could just play it off as just getting to know your new coworker, even if you didn’t work in the same area as he did.

You watched as the troopers started chowing down on their breakfasts, some eating slowly and savoring their meal, others shoveling it in as fast as they could. The new trooper dug in as well, but you noticed his face started turning red almost as soon as the hash hit is tongue. Most of the others with him had already started sipping on their milk, but the new clone was guzzling down his water before he ha d finished his first bite, coughing and trying to catch his breath as the strange food burned his mouth. You decided then that the prank had gone too far, and you got up to take the milk to the beleaguered clone.

“Here”, you told him. “Drink this. It will help take the spiciness away.” Toast, brow covered in sweat, eagerly took the milk from your hand and downed it in record time. “I’ll get you some more if you’d like.”, you said, and he vigorously nodded affirmingly. While you headed back to refill his milk, his brothers all gathered around him, patting him on the back jovially and welcoming him to the crew. On your way back to the table you noticed the small smile on his face, presumably for sufficiently passing the “test” and becoming one of the group. You still didn’t like Ether’s prank, but it did warm your heart to see the new trooper take it in stride, and his brothers gathering around to celebrate his official first day guarding the worst of the worst the galaxy had to offer.

While you were getting him a refill of milk you had an idea. Just because he had a bad experience with the spicy pepper hash didn’t mean that he couldn’t still have some breakfast. The problem was knowing what he liked. You had absolutely no idea. So you decided on the safe bet: toast. You grabbed a plate, a butter knife, and a fork, a couple of pieces of toast, and one pack each of butter and jogan fruit jam. Returning to the table you sat down at the seat opposite of Toast, placing the glass of milk and the plate in front of him, silently smacking yourself in the head when you noticed you added an unnecessary fork to the mix. Thoughts of how he would think you were an absolute idiot ran through your mind, but he looked up at you and smiled, graciously accepting the milk and toast.

He looked at the plate quizzically, before asking “What is this?” You were sure that he wouldn’t trust anything anyone else brought him after the fiery start to his first day, but he listened intently as you explained the different items you had placed on the plate. You told him the toast was an easy to eat food, not spicy and well tolerated by most people, and the butter and jam were used as spreads for the top. You thought he may like it more than the hash, so you brought it to him to try.

He seemed to accept your explanation, and after showing him how to add the butter and jam to toast you watched him take a bite. He chewed for a moment before his eyes went wide and a big smile split his face. Swallowing, he took a sip of milk, then looked back to you and exclaimed that it was the best thing that he had ever eaten in his life. At least, it was the best thing he had eaten up to that point.

“Well then, toast-boy, I’m glad there’s food here that you can enjoy. It’s my favorite food in the mess, I don’t really trust anything else, honestly.” You sat together at the table for a few minutes, asking each other questions and learning about your new friend. As the clock moved closer to the official start of your own day, you moved to wrap up your conversation, and you steered in the direction of your names. After you had officially introduced yourself, he looked at you sadly. He had never had a problem with not having a name before, but now he had to give you his designation, which felt inadequate, but he gave you what he had and explained that he hadn’t chosen a name for himself, and no one had given him a name either.

He didn’t have a name? How odd. Although you rarely worked with the clones directly every one you met had a name of some sort. Was it normal not to have a name? You didn’t know, but kind eyed clone gave you as much as he had. He was nice, and was good conversation, so you hoped that you would see him again.

“Listen, next time I see you, how about I call you Toast instead of those numbers? It would be easier for me to remember”.

“Yeah, I’d like that. ‘Toast’. Thanks for the name!”

You saw him in the mess every morning for breakfast from that day on.

#toast clone x reader #clone trooper toast #toast clone is best clone #our precious toast #what did i just write #i have no idea #it had a mind of its own #star wars fanfiction #star wars #the clone wars #gonna give toast some happiness if it kills me #toast clone

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gffa · 4 years

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ALL RIGHT THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG, BUT BEAR WITH ME. I rewatched all of The Clone Wars recently and it was a great way to look at both the details of each episode and get a sense for the bigger arc, because I was watching them all at once, both The Wrong Jedi arc and the Protocol 66 arc, the latter of which I think is super important to the context of the former, especially because they are right next to each other in the course of the series. Here’s the thing that surprised me the most about this arc: Ahsoka immediately didn’t trust anyone when she was framed. She instantly went on the run instead, she never tried to contact any of the other Jedi, not the Council, not even her own Master. She immediately ran and never put her trust in anyone else. I don’t know that this was the narrative intention, I would almost put money on that it’s probably not, but sometimes in writing characters when you’re true to them and how they would react, unintentional themes will rear their heads and be just as important. Now, she’s not necessarily wrong to have done this, because we’ll see Fives does trust in the system and he’s murdered for it anyway. Would Ahsoka have turned out the same? Possibly, she’s definitely not wrong about the system being stacked against her. But ultimately its not her own efforts that save her, but Anakin’s investigating as her Master. Possibly not, she doesn’t have a chip in her head that leads straight to Order 66 and Darth Sidious himself making sure she absolutely has to die. Oh, he wouldn’t have minded, but it wasn’t his direct goal. Ahsoka has a right to feel wary, because Anakin didn’t go visit her while she was in jail. Anakin’s right, they absolutely would have used it against her, it would have made her look even more guilty, and he was trying to give her the absolute best shot possible. This is almost assuredly the same exact reason the Jedi don’t go visit her after she’s expelled, because they do protest the entire way and a huge point is made about how she needs to get a fair trial, that the Senate is forcing them to expel her so that the Jedi won’t be accused of not taking this seriously, because they’re in a war and sedition/treason is an incredibly huge deal. And that’s also the thing--it’s easy to say that they should have stuck by Ahsoka (and I don’t disagree, they don’t disagree, they directly apologize to her for all of this!) but it’s still true that the Jedi were absolutely railroaded here. They worked to keep this a Jedi matter, but Tarkin and the Senate said that it involved the deaths of clones and Republic citizens, so she had to face a Republic trial. This is brought up like four separate times over the course of the arc, that the Jedi do not really have jurisdiction here. (And, yes, they did try to keep her there--that’s the whole point of showing Tarkin forcibly strong-arming them and saying what they believe doesn’t matter. That’s the whole point of Mace saying, “Let’s hope we can keep her here.”) This is also why the Protocol 66 arc is so important--Shaak Ti practically breaks her back trying to get Tup and Fives to the Jedi and she is roadblocked at almost every single turn or else plotted against behind her back to literally kidnap them away from her. She argues that they have jurisdiction here as Generals in the war, but the Kaminoans argue right back that the clones belong to them, and then the Chancellor’s office gets involved and there’s even less chance to get them to the Jedi, because the Senate’s involved now and what they say goes more than anything. Further, these two arcs are important as bookends to each other in two really important ways: 1. Each of them has a moment where the fugitive is finally caught. Ahsoka dives down into the lower levels of Coruscant to evade capture. Fives makes his case to Shaak Ti, who says she’ll take this seriously. They both ask a Jedi to trust them, but one turns himself over and one goes on the run. Again, who’s to say if Ahsoka made the better choice, because she is the one who lives, but Fives was basically dead the moment he started looking into this, no matter what. The point isn’t the outcome, but more that the Jedi don’t just throw him to the wolves, they fight to take this seriously and fight to find out the truth.

2. The cases against Fives and Ahsoka have some really fascinating parallels in that they’re both accused of a murder they didn’t commit (against Letta, against the Supreme Chancellor) and there’s footage of them running/seemingly attacking others along the way. This is important because, if you strip away the context of what we, the audience knows, Ahsoka looks incredibly guilty. There’s footage of her apparently choking Letta to death.

She runs away from the Jedi from the moment she’s set-up, even not trusting her own Master. She refuses to turn herself in or even contact them to tell them her side of things. There are dead clones in the path she takes out of the detention center, which appear to have been killed by a Force-wielder. She’s seen working and escaping with a known Separatist terrorist--because they have no way of knowing that Ventress has broken with the Separatists. Ahsoka herself says, in this arc, that she never saw her and Ventress working together, showing that it’s pretty hard to believe even when you’re in the middle of it, much less from the outside!

Eventually, she’s found and captured, while in possession of the very nano-droids that were used to blow up Jackar Bowmani in the Jedi Temple. If you take out the context of us seeing Ahsoka’s reactions and how she put these pieces together (which no one else in universe would know), it isn’t just the frame job that makes her look guilty, but that her own actions contribute to the way this looks from a distance. The evidence that piles up is really damning, that it’s not just one or two coincidental things, but an entire case against her! But they know Ahsoka, they have to know she couldn’t have gone to the dark side like that! And that’s why the beginning of this arc has a line that’s so easy to miss but it’s so important:

“There are many political idealists among us.” “But a traitor?” “I’m afraid one can eventually become the other. Remember Count Dooku and General Krell. That’s how they started too.” This has already happened before, that someone they thought they could trust turned out to be capable of terrible things. This entire arc cannot exist without the context of knowing that there is a Jedi in the Temple right now who is betraying them, that if Barriss had been in Ahsoka’s position for all of this, it would be entirely possible that she would have acted the same way from an outsider point of view. And how easy is it for us, even knowing that she absolutely is guilty, before we watched the end of this arc, to go, “But Barriss would never do that! I cannot believe she would have fallen so far!” It also cannot exist without the context of another important thing--and this was a deliberate detail put into the episode, as Dave Filoni comments on in one of the featurettes for this arc, how they deliberately had Anakin chasing her, because it was a moment of foreshadowing for Darth Vader to be chasing a Jedi down. Darth Vader looms over this arc in a way that deepens the context. Darth Vader, who is right there and the Jedi are trusting him, too. Trusting him to be impartial when looking into whether a Jedi was behind the bombing. Trusting him to be impartial when chasing after Ahsoka: Mace: “I think it would be best if Skywalker stayed here. Having you involved may actually make things worse.” Anakin: “Master Windu, with all due respect, she is my Padawan.” Mace: “The reason for you not to go.” Obi-Wan: “I think we're being foolish if we take Anakin off this mission. Who knows her better?” Mace: “He's emotionally tied to her. Probably too emotional to do what needs to be done.” Anakin: “I'd rather capture Ahsoka and find out the truth then let her run because of a lie.” Yoda: “You must prove to us that you will stay focused. Can you?” Anakin: “I've already alerted security on the lower levels to be on the lookout for Ahsoka.” Yoda: “Go swiftly then, Skywalker, and bring back this lost child before it is too late.” The point is that it’s incredibly hard to know who to trust, it’s easy to say with an omniscient point of view of the entire story and 20/20 hindsight, but they have concrete examples of people who have betrayed their trust before, so it’s entirely reasonable for them to recognize that someone else may betray them, too. That talking to them and showing that you’re willing to extend trust, that you’re willing to do this with a clear focus, is what gains their trust. And, yeah, for all that the context of Darth Vader is hanging over this arc, it’s also true that they’re right to trust Anakin in this moment. It’s his actions that save Ahsoka and bring the truth to light. As a fun bonus, this is all while the Force is so clouded with the dark side that Mace already said way back in Attack of the Clones, at the start of the war, that their ability to use the Force is diminished. The psychic stress that must put on them (as people who can feel the entire weight of a planet on their minds), that the normal non-psychic stress of being in a war that there are too few of them and they’re dying in it is already pushing them to their limits, including that the dark side is hampering their ability to cut through the fog, it’s reasonable not to blindly trust people. Baby Darth Vader being right there is a giant neon flashing light pointing to this. They want to treat Ahsoka fairly, but she isn’t giving them anything to work with, because she doesn’t trust them, either. Which is why I keep coming back to that line she says when she leaves Anakin and the Jedi, her reason for doing it: “Why are you doing this?” “The Council didn't trust me, so how can I trust myself?”

Earlier, she says, “I don’t know who to trust!” Then she begs Anakin to trust her. And ultimately she doesn’t know if even she can do that. Because trust is at the heart of this entire storyline. The opening quotes reflect this very nicely, too: 5.19 – Sometimes even the smallest doubt can shake the greatest belief. 5.18 – Courage begins by trusting oneself. 5.19 – Never become desperate enough to trust the untrustworthy. 5.20 – Never give up hope, no matter how dark things seem. An interesting note from one of the featurettes as well is that, originally, Ahsoka was going to rejoin the Jedi Order and that was going to be that. They changed their minds because the opportunity to do something else with Ahsoka was more tempting. Which says to me that this wasn’t an arc about exposing a fundamental eventuality, but instead about a far more complicated situation. Again, Ahsoka’s not entirely wrong or right in the way she goes about this. We can’t say for certain what would have happened if she’d trusted other people, all we can say is that she didn’t trust any one when she ran, that ultimately that she doesn’t feel she can trust herself by the end of it and Anakin was the one who finally cleared her name, not her own efforts. That she shows incredible fortitude for not giving in to the dark side, even when she was isolated. By the same token, the Jedi aren’t entirely right or wrong in the way they go about this. I do think they should have visited her, even though Tarkin would almost assuredly have used it against Ahsoka to make her look guilty, but to say that they just abandoned her and never tried to help her, that they totally betrayed her when she was clearly so innocent, that they never even said sorry--that’s incorrect, too. Both sides were right and wrong. It’s easy for us to feel for Ahsoka because we love her and her goodbye is incredibly heartbreaking, it’s so easy to trust her when we’re shown all the scenes of how this connects together and we see her reactions, that the story trusts us to let us in on her side of the events that happen. It’s so easy because she feels very vulnerable and she was a victim of a really shitty situation. It’s so easy because this is an incredibly harrowing experience for her and she stayed true to the light through it, through her own resilience. But stepping back from those feelings, hard as it was for me to do, let me see that Ahsoka failed in some important ways as well as that the Council failed in some important ways and that's why she herself decides that she needs to go figure herself out on her own, away from the Council and even away from Anakin, who was the one that always believed she was innocent and trusted her. Because it wasn’t just about other people, it was about her and her own actions. I had all of this put together just from watching these two arcs, but then I started watching the story reels, including, “In Search of the Crystal” where Obi-Wan and Anakin have a conversation about Ahsoka leaving and Obi-Wan says, “I will grant you mistakes we made but she chose to leave. Part of the Jedi way is not letting emotion cloud your better judgement. And that's precisely what Ahsoka did. Even in her most critical moment.”

Not too long ago I was watching the featurette for “The Lawless” where Dave talked about Obi-Wan (more in the context of how he cannot embrace the dark side) and how the events were written to show that he’s a true Jedi, that he sticks to the bigger themes of Star Wars, which that’s how Dave sees Obi-Wan. I was reminded of that, in that Obi-Wan is, for all that we give him shit about the “from a certain point of view” line, actually a really reliable narrator when it comes to emotion and how it can cloud a Force-sensitive person’s mind. Obi-Wan’s right, especially because it’s pretty easy to make the inference that he’s one of the Council who voted in favor of Ahsoka, that he believed in her, even as he recognizes that her emotions clouded her judgement. Even in her most critical moment. And when I went back to do my rewatch of The Clone Wars and these arcs, that became a lot clearer when I stepped back from my own emotional reactions to how much I love her and think she’s an incredible, good-hearted, kind, and compassionate person. Because even the best of people can be both wrong and right at the same time.

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #mace windu #jedi order #meta #long post #really long post

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eyayah-oya · 3 years

Text

Ancient Foundations to Build Upon

Clone Haven Ship of the Month | Prompt 4 | Ancient

Waxer/Boil

Rating: G

Warnings: none

Ao3

There were thousands of planets across the galaxy and very few beings could say they’ve been to all of them, most in the galaxy never straying from their home planet. Others traveled throughout the stars, gaining experiences as they met other species and tried different cultures.

Since the war began, Boil had been to many planets, though most have been far from the Core, fighting the Separatists. He’d been to worlds that only seemed to be a single biome, and others that were so diverse, he could be in a jungle one day, and then half a klick away, find himself in a field of snow. Each world was so different and unique. Boil had even crash-landed on a fair few planets and moons throughout the galaxy. Including the one they were stranded on now.

Boil had never seen a planet like this before. Aside from the platoon of troopers that had crashed on the planet with them, there were no inhabitants. From the atmosphere, they’d managed to catch a brief glimpse of some ancient ruins in the distance, overgrown with enormous trees that must have taken eons to grow, before they crashed through the canopy and all the way to the surface far below. In fact, all around them were trees so large around, they could fit an entire gunship inside the trunk, and some were even bigger.

“Do you think this is like Kashyyyk?” Waxer mused. Boil turned to look at him, and found Waxer trying—and failing—to wrap his arms around one of the smaller trees. A tree that could fit every soldier in the platoon on the planet with room for more.

“What?” Boil asked.

“Kashyyk. You know, the home planet of the wookies? I’ve heard that they’re homes are up in trees that are as enormous as these.”

Boil looked around at the strangely spiny shrubs, the large, fallen leaves, and the damp floor of the forest then up at the leafy roof far above their heads. “I think the trees are a lot more spread out on Kashyyyk,” he said. “And I don’t remember anything about the weird glowing moss when we learned about Kashyyyk during flash training.”

“Yeah, okay, the moss is definitely a bit weird.” Waxer pulled away from the tree, and Boil immediately noticed the strange, bio-luminescent blue moss smeared across his armor, giving him an odd glow in the dimness of the forest floor.

As Waxer crouched to examine some of the small plants and fungi growing on the forest floor, Boil turned his attention back to his surroundings. He couldn’t help but feel there was something . . . other about this planet. The very air of the planet felt ancient to him, enforced by the towering ruins far in the distance. It was almost as though time flowed around this planet. The war would not touch this place beyond the troopers that had crashed to the surface. A thousand different wars across the centuries would never affect this planet. Time didn’t matter.

Maybe it was the isolation. Or perhaps the knowledge that there were no other sentient beings on the planet. Something about the air and the trees and the weird glowing moss burrowed deep in Boil’s chest and caught his breath. It gave him hope and terrified him at the same time, and he couldn’t understand it.

The air was thick with stories long lost and the knowledge that no one would ever remember the history that had built the foundations of the planet. Boil had a feeling that even if he and the other troopers made any kind of mark on this planet, it would disappear within a decade, if not sooner.

But as he stood, looking at the strangely beautiful foliage, Boil could feel a longing desire deep in his bones to stay. To allow himself to grow old with this planet, Waxer at his side. That they would live as long as the planet allowed them too, regardless of immaterial things like genetics. Nothing the Kaminoans had done to the clones would affect them here—he could feel it—and there was a deep desire to just . . . not go back.

“Boil?” Waxer laid a hand on Boil’s vambrace and gave him a small shake. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. This planet is just weird. It’s like—”

“It’s asking us to stay,” Waxer finished. “Like it wants us to stay and make memories and create a home here. Almost like it’s lonely. Do you think we could find this planet again after the war?”

“Dunno, Wax. We weren’t supposed to be here in the first place. We were supposed to meet up with the rest of the 212th on Umbara when our ships went all weird.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of Force osik,” Waxer mused. “If we’re meant to come back, then I’m sure we’ll find a way. It just feels like this place was meant for us. Us and our brothers, and maybe even the Jedi. We’d be safe here.”

And it was true. Despite how strange the planet was, Boil could practically feel the way the planet wanted them to be there. That they would all be safe until they could get a communication out to General Kenobi or someone found them. There was nothing that would harm them while they were there.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts and back into the mindset of an officer of the 212th Attack Battalion, Boil gestured to the squad of shinies that had been in his gunship when they’d crashed. “Are you all okay?” he asked.

“Yes, sir!” they all responded and snapped off sharp salutes.

Waxer waved the salutes aside. “At ease, troopers. We don’t know how long we’re gonna be stuck here, so let’s skip the formalities. We need to set up a base camp, preferably near the ships so anyone who comes looking for us can find us easily. Boil, do you want to round up some scouts and figure out if there’s anything edible for us nearby?”

Boil nodded and only paused to knock his vambrace against Waxer’s before he set off to find Wooley and a few other of the older vod’e to come with him. He certainly wasn’t taking shinies out into the mysterious forest that wanted them to stay. Between Waxer and Boil, they would make sure everyone was still alive to rescue.

Four years after the platoon of 212th troopers had gotten stranded on the mysterious planet, Boil found himself standing on his porch, looking out over the dozens of other houses built on the branches of the enormous trees. The luminescent moss lined the pathways they’d built between houses and lit up doorways. It was perfect for nighttime, when it was so dark, Boil couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. But during the day, the moss just added a gentle glow as soft sunlight filtered through the leaves, beams of light dappling over the large community that had settled down on this planet.

Red rays of light flickered down through the canopy as the sun set beyond the distant horizon, dancing across the large platform that had been built in the center of the tree, surrounded by the rest of the community. A group of children listened as Wooley told them a folk tale from Alderaan. Jedi and clones alike sat among the children, practically buried beneath several tiny bodies, nodding off to the soft lilting tone to Wooley’s voice. He had found his calling in the After. So many vod’e had. It warmed something deep in Boil’s heart to see them happy.

A soft scuff on the porch behind him had Boil turning to find Waxer standing in the doorway to their home. He had that soft, sappy smile on his face whenever he was feeling something especially happy.

(Boil wasn’t sure why, but this planet affected some of the vod’e more than others. The cadets and the Tubies were especially affected, treasured by the strange planet they now called home. General Kenobi took one step on the planet and had blacked out for days as he received vision after vision of the people who had once lived there long ago. Of the hopes the planet held to have a peaceful people for once. Ones that would treasure the land and the trees and would seek no violence but would offer protection to any who needed it. From that moment on, General Kenobi and Commander Cody had begun planning, along with several other Jedi and Commanders in the GAR. And it just so happened, when they finally were able to flee the Republic and find their new home, Waxer was one of the ones the planet affected the most. He was more attuned to the emotions of everyone around him, and would frequently spend time in the nurseries to take care of the babies. And he was most attuned to Boil’s emotions.)

“Hi,” Boil said.

Waxer took the last few steps until he stood at the edge of their porch, right beside Boil and leaned against him. “It’s a beautiful night tonight. Crys said it might rain sometime tonight, though, so it might be a good idea to bring your boots inside.”

Boil hummed in acknowledgment, bringing his arm up to wrap around Waxer’s waist.

“You’re quieter than normal tonight.”

“Just thinking about how we managed to end up here,” Boil answered. “What do you think would have happened if our ships hadn’t gone all haywire and landed us here on this planet instead of going to Umbara.”

“I think things might have been worse if we hadn’t landed here. Krell’s trap would have worked if Cody had had enough men to send to go to the coordinates. And General Kenobi might not have figured out the Sith Lord before it was too late,” Waxer said with a shudder.

“And we wouldn’t have found out about the chips in our heads. That would have been disastrous.”

Waxer was silent for several minutes. “I think it’s better to focus on what really did happen. On the lives that we have now, instead of what could have happened if we hadn’t landed on this planet. Not even a Sith Lord can change the Will of the Force, and that’s what brought us here. The Force gave us this home, gave us a chance to be safe and happy, a chance to raise the younglings on a planet without war or slavery. We can give them warm, loving homes.”

Boil looks back down at the group of children, most of them fast asleep on their chosen pillows, though not a single vod or Jedi would ever complain about it. The children were precious to them. So very precious. And there were very few feelings in the galaxy that compared to having a warm Little asleep on your chest after a long day of playing and working. The trust and the knowledge that the adults would never let them get hurt pulled emotions Boil hadn’t known existed to the surface.

“Come on,” Waxer said, turning to tug him back into their home. “Numa’s staying with Cut and Suu for the night. She wanted a sleepover with Shaeeah.”

“Is that right?” Boil asked with a grin. He followed Waxer easily into their home, shutting the door and locking it behind him. All thoughts of the life they’d built together on this beautiful, mysterious, ancient planet disappeared and all he could focus on was his husband.

#clone/clone #cloneshipping #waxer/boil #boxer #clone haven sotm #soft and fluffy #clone trooper waxer #clone trooper boil

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